Letterbox framing problems w/ ffmpeg

[foopot]

Hi, I've done a search for this and haven't found anything yet, so here goes....

I've got some .avi's of fansubbed anime and dramas where the fansubbers spaced the subs too low and too wide. This means if I make dvds from them, the subs get cut off at the side or disappear off the bottom from overscan. What I'm trying to do is to simply encode the dvd with a smaller video size and put an even black border all the way around the image with the Letterbox filter to bring it back to 720x480, that way the border will get eaten by the overscan and I can see the whole picture. Problem is is that if I use equal border settings all the way around, ffmpegx just ignores the settings and gives me a fullsized 720x480 image w/o the black borders -- i.e. I set video size to 688x448, LB filter to 16,16,16,16, and I just get a normal 720x480 image with no borders. If I leave the video size at 720x480 w/ same LB settings, then I get the black borders I want, but the final video size is too big (752x512) for the DVD standard. Is there a way to get the borders and proper final video size that I'm missing? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[major]

In the example where you set the video size to 688x448, was your source movie also 688x448?

[foopot]

Hi Major, sorry about that. No, they are 720x480 original size.

[alph]

What you describe should work. The only problem I could see is that you are maybe using decode with Quicktime. For manual letterboxing to work you need to decoded with ffmpeg as well as encode with it.

Just to recap.

-Use DVD ffmpeg preset
-set autosize to 16:9 or dvd 16:9
-set video size to 688x448
-set all letterbox sizes to 16
-Make sure "Decode with quicktime" in options is unchecked
-The rest is up to you.

Beyond this, makes sure you have the latest version of the application and the binaries.

Hope this helps,
Alph

P.S. A size of 672x448 or something similar might possibly be a better choice given your original aspect ratio of 720/480.